One of my practice partners recently showed me something new, but I don’t know what it’s called: when I pushed towards him, he put his hand on my elbow and, without pushing or any movement, stopped my push by breaking the flow of chi down my arm.

There was no sensation of pain, just a pulsing as I continued to guide chi into the push, searching for a way around the blockage. The pulsing was my chi bouncing back and forth between my shoulder and my elbow and then it pooled in my chest and I disengaged because the feeling of pressure was uncomfortable. Not painful, just weird.

He said that the process is to find the chi channel that your opponent is using and then send out a beam of your own chi to interrupt the flow. It felt like a blockade. I couldn’t find a way around it. Of course, I was pretty freaked out by the whole thing—where did my forearm go and why can’t I push? So it was a little hard to concentrate.

I called this intercepting jin, nothing to do with chi or anything else, just pure physic. You just need to apply subtle strength on your opponents pushing elbow, which is meant to redirect the pushing force back to his body udsing his own hand and shoulder...kind of like creating a small loop back to him. However the strength you apply and angle must be right.

I often demo this to students and others alike, no matter how big they are and how stronger then me, it works 100% of the time...its science. In PH, you can also use the similar tech by pulling-in or pushing-out at your partner's upper hand and elbow and control him completely. Experiment it yourselves and you will be able to get it right and use it during PH.

Ah, now I understand a little bit better. Thank you! I will practice listening to return an incoming push very subtly. I will also practice your suggestion from the push hands strategy forum about subtracting out the opponent's resistance, waiting for them to retreat to recover balance, then pushing.